1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to systems and methods for providing a virtual trade show via internet for healthcare professionals. More particularly, the invention relates to systems and methods providing via internet a virtual trade show for the participants in the healthcare industry, including the participants of any healthcare trade shows, seminars, conferences, etc., especially healthcare professionals.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
A variety of healthcare data management systems have been developed for improving the delivery of healthcare such as U.S. Pat. No. 5,542,420 entitled “Personalized Method and System for Storage, Communication, Analysis, and Processing of Health-Related Data” to Goldman et al. on Aug. 6, 1996 for a personalized prescription as to edibles, U.S. Pat. No. 5,940,802 entitled “Digital Disease Management System” to Hildebrand, et. al. on Aug. 17, 1999 for improving the delivery of healthcare for patients, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,301,105 entitled “All Care Health Management System” to Cummings, Jr. on Apr. 5, 1994 for providing a closed network among insurers and healthcare providers to better manage healthcare utilization and reimbursements. As internet is getting more popular and secured by modern technologies, more such information systems further included an internet-transmitting feature, such as U.S. Pat. No. 5,890,129 to Spurgeon on Mar. 30, 1999, entitled “System for Exchanging Healthcare Insurance Information”.
There are many virtual sites related to healthcare, such as “Virtual Medical Center—Martindale's Health Science Guide” at http://www-sci.lib.uci.edu/HSG/Medical.html, but not a virtual healthcare trade show site designed for B2B. As more individual data management systems or virtual sites have been developed for healthcare practitioners, health management organizations, pharmaceutical companies, medical equipment, device and testing manufacturers and suppliers, consumers healthcare products manufacturers, etc. to cover increasing healthcare information in different therapeutic categories, it becomes increasingly difficult for a member of the healthcare industry to find the desired materials in the flood of information. Therefore, most participants still go to visit expensive and time-consuming trade shows, professional conferences, and continuing educational seminars to accomplish their own pre-set agenda as well as explore interactively with other participants to obtain desired information. From the transactional perspective, trade shows facilitate face-to-face contact, promotional sales information, and in some cases actual sales.
In addition, many trade shows emphasize a specific sector or geographic area of the worldwide healthcare industry to educate, promote products and services and promote sales.
In view of the role of trade shows as above-outlined, many companies have attempted to produce a similar environment over the web to take advantage of its low-cost and convenient worldwide entry, and its ease of operation. For example, the Healthcare Convention and Exhibitors Association hosts a site at http://www.hcea.org/ (as visited on Jun. 13, 2000), which Association brings together trade show designers, city and state convention centers and other groups involved in designing, hosting and providing production services to a trade show. The site also solicits participants for a traditional trade show for conventional services to be held in June 2000 in Savannah. Both the exhibitors of the booths and the Attendees to this site will be different from the exhibitors and Attendees of the trade show of the present invention. In hcea.org, the exhibitors are cities desiring to host a trade show, designers, not booths, manufacturers of booths and the Attendees are trade show planners and designers of healthcare manufacturers and suppliers of products and services. As another example, although “American Medical Review Online Tradeshow” http://tradeshows-online.com/americanmedical/html/exhibitionhall.htm (as visited on Jun. 13, 2000) offers consumers, not participants of the healthcare industry, each show booth with an introduction video, textual and graphic descriptions of the products or services, an e-mail message box, and a link to the seller's webpage, the booths are simply characterized by products, services, and alternative medicine. The above-mentioned two sites are consumer-oriented, namely business-to-consumer (B2C). In addition, both of the above-mentioned sites have data structures and functions that are overly-simplified and so limited that they can hardly help anyone obtain his/her desired information efficiently. U.S. Pat. No. 5,966,130 titled “Integrated Virtual Networks” to Benman, Jr. on Oct. 12, 1999 describes a system allowing a participant to attend a trade show as it happens with live or virtual imagery. However, it fails to provide many characteristics of a traditional trade show desired by the participants of the healthcare industry.
Currently, there is not a healthcare tradeshow facilitating a business-to-business e-commerce platform for the healthcare participants to allow healthcare manufacturers and suppliers of products and services to provide content, community and commerce to healthcare providers including, but not limited to physicians, doctors, dentists, nurses, veterinarians, pharmacists, managed care organizations, insurers, pharmacy benefit managers, clinics, nursing homes, hospitals, specialty pharmacy networks, pharmacies, drug wholesalers, medical schools, veterinary schools and dental schools.